(extract from the short story Phoelem’s Room. I am seeking publication for it so this is only an extract.)
“In the heart of every man there is a door so small he may neither enter nor exit it. Nor may anyone else.”
Gogul Gukarin
Phoelem lived between all the known worlds. And among all the not known ones. In a sciamachic room he never left. In a way he never dared vary.
It was a very small room. Barely big enough to allow him to change his mind. Since, once determined upon something he never actually ever did change his mind he thought his room quite accommodating and spacious. But to you or me it would have been a puny and miserable prison. Probably, though if Truth be told I don’t actually know you. So that’s really just an assumption on my part.
Anyway, this room had a door. A small red one, barely a foot and a half in height and maybe half a foot across. There were many things just outside that little door but Phoelem never saw those things. Not even once. Or, if he ever did, he never recalled them. It had been so long ago since he had used the door.
It was a red door, or yellow, or maybe golden, or perhaps wooden, or perhaps all of these, he was fairly sure of that, though by what means he knew this he also could not recall. Maybe it was the one from whom he had procured the room that had told him this. Perhaps not. He could not recall.
In any case he never used the door. If anyone knocked he refused them entrance. If he ever had a desire to open it, just, say, out of curiosity, he quickly quashed such an absurd and anxious thought. The Door was plainly visible from inside the room as well, and so just as obvious within as without, but Phoelem never saw it. It was all-wall to him.
Phoelem abnegated on every possible occasion in every manner permitted. And he permitted himself a very wide range of Spartan limitations indeed. So permisquious was he in his personal desuetudes that he never knew a singular occurrence to prompt him to act otherwise.*
Other than the use of his Oculoom. The Oculoom itself was a most unique and exceptional device, one of countless such artifacts Phoelem kept stashed in a small treasury beneath his bed; which also served as his reclining chair as well as his study and his library and his kitchen and his toilet. I have already informed you that he was Spartan in his habits, have I not?
It was an odd device, this Oculoom. At once spherical, yet angular, both twisted and concave, straight, large, insubstantial, bulging, miniscule, solid yet nebulous, numinous, ordinary, surrepent, warm to touch yet frigid in operation – a regular tortus of improbabilities. And it was all his.
Indeed it may have been the only thing he owned which he ever truly desired to use, or which made much use of him. Or any use of him. But perhaps I get ahead of myself with that diversion in the story. So I’ll continue with our primary narrative unabated or distracted if you don’t mind. Thank you for your indulgence.
Suffice it to say that Phoelem made much use of the Oculoom. Some would even say that he became the Oculoom, or vice versa, or “non-sequitur inquesta” one might proclaim from the available evidence, but that matter is still open for autopsy, and again, not for me to say. After all I only work here and merely record what I discover. Or cannot.
In any case what is the Oculoom and how does it function? This is most perplexing to define, for the Oculoom was part crystal ball, part musical instrument, part loom, part self-fulfilling prophecy, part alchemical offal, part preponderate, part portent of things to come, part hegira, and part “scientificus delirium.” There are, no doubt, many other such fantastic working parts involved in its many varied operations but I am no technician, as the Greeks would say, I am but a humble scribe of what is not to be and has probably never been…
END EXTRACT
#shortstory #fiction #magicalsurrealism #fantasy
Wyrdwend 